In the next three years, following the example of many a French Huguenot privateersman before him, and forsaking trade for semi-private reprisal (in that epoch a few degrees short of piracy), he made three voyages to the Spanish Indies. On the third, in 1572, he raided Nombre de Dios with fire and sword. Then, leaguing himself with the mixed-breed natives or cameroons, he waylaid a guarded mule-train bearing treasure across the Isthmus, securing 15 tons of silver which he buried, and as much gold as his men could stagger away under. It was on this foray that he first saw the Pacific from a height of the Cordilleras, and resolved to steer an English squadron into this hitherto unmolested Spanish sea. The tale of Drake's voyage into the Pacific and circumnavigation of the globe is a piratical epic, the episodes of which, however, find some justification in the state of virtual though undeclared hostilities between England and Spain, in the Queen's secret sanction, and in Spain's own policy of ruthless spoliation in America. Starting at the close of 1577 with five small vessels, the squadron was reduced by shipwreck and desertion until only the flagship remained when Drake at last, on September 6 of the next year, achieved his midwinter passage of the Straits of Magellan and bore down, "like a visitation of God" as a Spaniard said, upon the weakly defended ports of the west coast. After ballasting his ship with silver from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened onward in pursuit of a richly laden galleon nicknamed _Cacafuego_--a name discreetly translated _Spitfire_, but which, to repeat a joke that greatly amused Drake's men at the time, it was proposed to change to _Spitsilver_, for when overtaken and captured the vessel yielded 26 tons of silver, 13 chests of pieces of eight, and gold and jewels sufficient to swell the booty to half a million pounds sterling. For 20 years the voyage across the northern Pacific had been familiar to the Spanish, who had studied winds and currents, laid down routes, and made regular crossings. Having picked up charts and China pilots, and left the whole coast in panic fear, Drake sailed far to the northward, overhauled his ship in a bay above San Francisco, then struck across the Pacific, and at last rounded Good Hope and put into Plymouth in September of the third year. It suited Elizabeth's policy to countenance the voyage. She put the major part of the treasure into the Tower, took some trinkets herself, knighted Drake aboard the _Golden Hind_, and when the Spanish ambassador talked war she told him, in a quiet tone of voice, that she would throw him into a dungeon.